Supreme Court, free speech, anon remailers...

[davidm@iconz.co.nz (David Murray)]

Tim May wrote:

>Nathan Zook wrote:
>
>> I believe, therefore, that both the court and the dissent bode poorly for
>> anonymous encrypted mail.
>
>But anonymous handbills are quite common, posted all over the place
>here in my home town, and the Supreme Court ruled quite properly that
>identities are not required for speech.

I too was concerned by the strong dissent in the anonymous handbill case
posted to the net, largely because I live in a country where we have
inherited the odious British practice of requiring newspapers and other
published material (such as handbills) to carry the name of the printer
and the sponsoring organisation (or sumpin' like that...). Its contemporary
significance is supposed to be as a control for defamation (yes, we still
have strong defamation laws -- good thing too, IMHO, and something cryto/
anonymity may or may not render moot): which is to say turning every
publisher and printer into a censor. [Even more bizarrely, the law requires
newspaper proprietors and editors to swear certain documents and deliver
them to the High Court every year...]

Of course, I have never heard of this particular piece of legislation being
invoked to prosecute someone who hasn't complied, and I've never heard of 
anyone complying. Nevertheless, it is on the books.

It seems to me that it would only take a minor amendment to the US law on
the identification of periodicals that are posted (notice the colophons [?]
in all those newspapers and magazines) to apply to all publications...
A couple of extra words in the definition section and away we go. (It's not
a freedom of speech issue, it's an environmental issue -- all those
handbills cluttering up the landfills... And it would only be fair to treat
the denizens of the information superhypeway equally...).

Things ain't half as safe as you might think.

D.